Redmond / Mountain View, USA — June 13, 2016 —Today Microsoft has released the announcement to acquire the world’s largest professional social network LinkedIn for $26.2b, by paying $196 per share.

The initial changes will not impact LinkedIn’s current brand and organizational structure. Jeff Weiner will remain the CEO of LinkedIn, but now will report to Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft. LinkedIn will keep it’s brand, culture and independence as it is right now.

What else is in the shopping cart?

Along with the core business of LinkedIn, Microsoft will also take ownership of previously made investments and acquisitions of LinkedIn. This will include open investments in STAND Technologies and Confluent as well as the acquisitions of Run Hop, Connectifier, Fliptop, lynda.com, Refresh.io, Careerify, Bizo, Newsle, Bright.com and Pulse.

Next to leveraging LinkedIn to extend their software service portfolio, by adding a mature social network, another interesting aspect is the data volume of 433 million users across the globe. This could potentially become a nice combination with Microsoft’s cloud solutions Office 365 and Dynamics on top of that.

Facts on LinkedIn performances

19 percent growth year over year (YOY) to more than 433 million members worldwide

9 percent growth YOY to more than 105 million unique visiting members per month

49 percent growth YOY to 60 percent mobile usage

34 percent growth YOY to more than 45 billion quarterly member pageviews

101 percent growth YOY to more than 7 million active job listings

Leadership opinion

“The LinkedIn team has grown a fantastic business centered on connecting the world’s professionals,” Nadella said. “Together we can accelerate the growth of LinkedIn, as well as Microsoft Office 365 and Dynamics as we seek to empower every person and organization on the planet.”

“Just as we have changed the way the world connects to opportunity, this relationship with Microsoft, and the combination of their cloud and LinkedIn’s network, now gives us a chance to also change the way the world works,” Weiner said. “For the last 13 years, we’ve been uniquely positioned to connect professionals to make them more productive and successful, and I’m looking forward to leading our team through the next chapter of our story.”

About LinkedIn

LinkedIn connects the world’s professionals to make them more productive and successful and transforms the way companies hire, market, and sell. Our vision is to create economic opportunity for every member of the global workforce through the ongoing development of the world’s first Economic Graph. LinkedIn has more than 400 million members and has offices around the globe.

About Microsoft

Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT” @microsoft) is the leading platform and productivity company for the mobile-first, cloud-first world, and its mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more.